Why Lightfoot should allow media real-time access to police and emergency radio
For anyone who visited the Tribune’s newsroom over the years, the crackle of police radio broadcasts was a memorable part of the tour. Reporters, editors and photographers all listened in to the transmissions, round the clock. Much of the chatter was routine and prosaic. But for decades, our newsroom, like others across the city, has been ready to scramble if the radio indicated a major news event coming down.
This past week, several Chicago media organizations, including the Chicago Sun-Times, all the major local TV stations and this newspaper, banded together to protest Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to put an end to that practice and encrypt police radio broadcasts so they would be publicly available only after a 30-minute delay.
Lightfoot’s argument, which has some merit, is that the contemporaneous broadcasting of internal police communications can tip off wrongdoers and compromise police officer safety.
Lightfoot has said that she has seen circumstances where criminals listen in to these broadcasts and proceed accordingly, since they know if and when the cops are heading in their direction. This situation, the mayor has said, is especially difficult at times of mass civil unrest like the protests of the summer of 2020, when some protesters attempted to block the receipt of police transmissions by blowing air horns or even making bogus “officer down” calls designed to create chaos and confuse police response.
All valid concerns, but they don’t win the day.
Media organizations have a duty to inform the community of events transpiring as quickly as they can. Being able to listen in to police and emergency radio is a crucial part of how they fulfill that mission. In the event of severe weather, shootings or other sudden crises, timely news from the media often has allowed Chicagoans to get to safety fast, or rush to help one of their kids at school, or take some other crucial, corrective action.
If the media is waiting for 30 minutes or more to hear what is being said about, say, the path of a tornado or a multicar pileup on the Kennedy Expressway, how are they going to get that news out to the public in a timely fashion?
It’s simple. They’re not.
But emergency information is not the only pivotal issue here. As we have written many times, transparency is a vital part of effective policing that builds trust. The community knowing what police are saying to each other, what is coming down in their neighborhoods, what police are doing and planning to do, is an important part of that.
What is said on police radio is fundamental to police accountability, to figuring out how police can do better when bad incidents happen, especially involving police misconduct. And we’re not speaking about inquests behind closed doors. We’re talking out in the open, in the light of day.
If a delay is allowed, the first thing that any officer worried about the potential revelation of a career-ending action might wonder is if the public release of that incriminating information can be stopped or erased. Even if the Chicago Police Department pledged not to mess with the tape delay, there still would be the appearance of a lack of transparency. History is littered with such edits.
Once a transmission’s real-time release is nixed, there always will be that question of the missing minutes, and that’s less than healthy for Chicago. Already, of course, police have other means of communication when something very sensitive is happening. On rare occasions there is a case for that. But the default is and should remain the scanner.
The media organizations say that Lightfoot is refusing to talk and negotiate in good faith. Lightfoot has said the 30-minute delay she has offered to media outlets should be accepted. In several public statements on this issue, she has made no distinction between accredited media and the public. She has argued that they are one and the same, and that to do otherwise would make her vulnerable to accusations of favoring one media outlet over another. We disagree.
It’s true that, in these days of rabble-rousers on Facebook, self-published Substacks and activist podcasters, some of those old boundaries have blurred and information gets disseminated more widely. But qualitative accreditation still exists.
Journalists of standing still get to go where the general public, often for security reasons, does not. You find professional media on Air Force One, in nonpublic areas at the White House, at Pentagon news conferences, at crime scenes and in war zones. Those reporters, who sometimes risk their lives, undergo security checks and are expected by their employers and peers to uphold ethical standards. Keeping the transmissions available to the city’s newsrooms is not the same as keeping them open for anyone with the right receiver.
It might not be right for Lightfoot to favor one competitor over another, but it’s a far more reasonable compromise for her to insist on real journalists.
Ideally, we support maximum transparency. At a minimum, the representatives of the people should retain their access to real-time emergency transmissions. Otherwise, the risks to the city and its people are simply too great.